Dear Bob, here are some photos of my life here on the campus of Concordia Seminary. I love kids, working with the grounds crew, swimming, playing with my dog friends, and especially my own family people.

Twitter Updates

January 25, 2013

How the AP Style Book affects reporting

The AP Style Book is the journalist's bible, it gives reporters everything they need to know to correctly report on stories including spelling, grammar, terminology, finance and bankrupcy, and law. What is now common practice is the elimination of the word 'life' when it comes to reporting on abortion foes. It is not right to life or March for Life when it comes to telling the story, it is abortion opponents, or anti-abortion activists.

Andrea Mitchell describes using "anti-abortion" instead of pro life as more value neutral. The AP Style Book tells journalists to Use anti-abortion instead of pro-life.

"We call them pro-abortion rights and anti-abortion rights because it's
the right to abortion that we're talking about," said Linda Mason, CBS
senior vice president of news and in charge of standards. "What does
pro-life mean? That leaves people scratching their heads."

How interesting this is. Keep life out of the conversation so we don't have to look too deeply into what abortion really is. Today is the March for Life in Washington DC to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade and the beginning of the legal abortion era. It will be interesting to see how this is reported on the news, if it's reported at all.

I did a quick Google search for March for Life and most of the reports say that this year should see record numbers of people attending and other than calling the march by its official name, March for Life, the word life is not used, but rather 'anti-abortion activists' is the term. Just like the stylebook decrees.